I’m one of the few people out there who really enjoys the Kinect Sports franchise, even the relatively inaccurate first Kinect Sports on the Xbox 360.

It was a great party game that was simple to pick-up-and-play with a group of friends. I recently sat down with with Drew Quakenbush, Rare’s director of studio operations, to talk about the company’s upcoming Xbox One game, Kinect Sports Rivals.

Kinect Sports Rivals’ Preseason proved how capable Kinect 2.0 really can be, but will the level of fun and accuracy that mini-game provides be maintained in Rivals’ other mini-games?

Q: This might come as a surprise but I’ve always been a big fan of the Kinect Sports franchise, but a lot of my friends who classify themselves as hardcore gamers scoff at the series’ motion controls. Are you changing anything in Rivals to attract a more core gaming audience?

Drew Quakenbush: You know that’s a really good question. The great thing about Kinect Sports was the accessibility that’s built into the game. It’s a pick-up-and-play game that whether you were young or old was very playable. What we’ve done with the Kinect Sports franchise and the Xbox One is we’re really using all of the capabilities of the box.

Champion scanning brings a rationalization element into it, putting you front and center in the game. We’ve put in a large competitive aspect wrapping around the entire game. So game progression isn’t as flat and linear or disjointed as it was in previous games where you just jump from one map to another. We’ve built a large meta game around it that has a really social competitive atmosphere as well.

So it’s accessible but it’s also deep as well. There’s definitely going to be online play, cold storage of your avatar, its attributes compete against your friends list whether you’re offline or online (this is similar to Forza 5’s drivatar feature). So there’s always a sense of competition going on throughout the game.

Soccer makes a return in Kinect Sports Rivals.

This will appeal to gamers like yourself because the game definitely has that competitive aspect. The other thing we’ve done is with storing your champion in the cloud, as you progress through the game you level up and so does your competition. The game grows along with you and becomes more difficult as you become a more difficult competitor.

Q: One of the biggest issues with the Kinect Sports titles on the Xbox 360 was the Kinect’s technical limitations. With the Xbox One and Kinect 2.0, are you able to do much more with the game and does it perform more accurately?

Drew Quakenbush: Aboslutely, it’s a phenomonal jump we’ve made with Kinect 2.0. The level of fidelity we’ve achieved through that sensor is quite amazing… I don’t know if you’ve played the Preseason demo we have up on Xbox Live. That level of gameplay and that complexity just wasn’t achievable prior to this.

If you look at the leader boards currently going on in our international competition, the difference between first place and second place in the leaderboards is literally a 100th of a second. You’re able to achieve that kind of score because of the level of control you have. You’re able to optimize your driving lane in wake racing to cut the corners for the best route and use power ups to optimize your overall lap time…

I’m not entirely sure how Rival’s rock climbing mini-game is going to work, but the concept sounds cool.

Q: In terms of mini-games which ones made the cut this time?

Drew Quakenbush: We have three fan favourites that were bringing back: Soccer, tennis and bowling and we have three brand new sports we haven’t done before: rock climbing, target shooting and wake racing

Q: With the mini-games that are returning is there anything specific you did to change them to make the experience different?

Drew Quakenbush: Absolutely – so the gameplay in it has change completely from previous iterations. With bowling we use the open/close hand to grab the ball (you can pick up your bowling ball now). We track your hand’s state, your arm and your elbow, to look at the position of your hand and when you open up your hand, that’s your release point. It really gives a smooth and natural gameplay mechanic that we just didn’t have before…

It’s really able to cleanly look at your state, your position, your velocity, where you’re positioned and what you’re doing. It really brings a natural feel to the gameplay.

What we’ve done with tennis, with previous iterations it was more of a back ball mechanic that was just looking at timing. But now we can not only measure your timing and the velocity of your swing, you can change the swing that you want. You can do top spin, you can do back spin and you can also do lobs. It really creates a more complex and robust gaming mechanic. Another really cool thing is you can now direct your shots…

Q: Can games be played from a sitting position as well as standing?

Drew Quakenbush: Yeah, some of the games can be played from a sitting position. Wake racing works from your couch and so can rock climbing. When you have the most fun is when you’re standing up and engaging with the game fully. But yeah, with the new sensor it can track you sitting down as well quite robustly.

Q: How does the champion tracking feature work?

Drew Quakenbush…With Kinect 2.0 and the incredible technology they put in there, what we’re able to do is recreate you within the game. We add our own artist style to that. During the scanning process there’s an initial scanning of your body mass. So it’s looking at your height, your shoulder width and your waist size, in order to determine the rough shape and size of you.

Target shooting is one of Kinect Sports’ new mini-games.

And then we go into a detailed facial scan – it’s about two minutes front and back for the entire experience – what we’re looking at is 86 key points in your face to determine your facial shape: the width of your eyes, the colour of your skin, whether or not you’re wearing glasses, if you have a beard, the shape of your hair, the colour of your hair and the volume of your hair, all to get an accurate picture of the shape and dimensions of your face. We take that data and then add our artistic style so everyone has a champion feel to them.

Q: Does every mini-game support multiplayer and online play?

Drew Quakenbush: Yeah 2-4 players. Our Bowling is up to 4 players, wake racing, target shooting and tennis all support splitscreen. There’s also live play so you can do console vs. console.

Q: What are your post release plans? Will there be downloadable mini-games or is Rare moving onto a new project?

Drew Quakenbush: We have long support plans that we’re going to put in place post release. It’s a lot similar to what we’ve done with Preseason. With Preseason we’ve had a monthly release with new content, we’ve had new challenges and new leagues start up. We’ll continue with that flow of content, so it’s a robust service plan that we have outlined for Kinect Sports Rivals post launch.

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Kinect Sports Rivals is set to be released on April 8, 2014 for the Xbox One.